Hackathons as participatory design: Iterating feminist utopias
Author(s)
Hope, Alexis; D'Ignazio, Catherine; Hoy, Josephine; Michelson, Rebecca; Roberts, Jennifer; Krontiris, Kate; Zuckerman, Ethan; ... Show more Show less
DownloadPublished version (1.849Mb)
Alternative title
Iterating Feminist Utopias
Terms of use
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
© 2019 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Breastfeeding is not only a public health issue, but also a matter of economic and social justice. This paper presents an iteration of a participatory design process to create spaces for re-imagining products, services, systems, and policies that support breastfeeding in the United States. Our work contributes to a growing literature around making hackathons more inclusive and accessible, designing participatory processes that center marginalized voices, and incorporating systems- and relationship-based approaches to problem solving. By presenting an honest assessment of the successes and shortcomings of the first iteration of a hackathon, we explain how we re-structured the second Make the Breast Pump Not Suck hackathon in service of equity and systems design. Key to our re-imagining of conventional innovation structures is a focus on experience design, where joy and play serve as key strategies to help people and institutions build relationships across lines of difference. We conclude with a discussion of design principles applicable not only to designers of events, but to social movement researchers and HCI scholars trying to address oppression through the design of technologies and socio-technical systems.
Date issued
2019Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media LaboratoryPublisher
ACM Press
ISBN
9781450359702